In the excerpt below, I discuss egalitarian strategies and respond to such charges, arguing that a more egalitarian society would likely be freer and friendlier to innovation. Another element of egalitarian economic policies is a reliable and sufficiently generous safety net, which takes the character of social insurance as insurance seriously. Wouldn’t a more egalitarian economic system lead to bleak, grey homogenization, without any space for those risk-takers and innovators to whom we owe so much? Ultimately, a more egalitarian society would be a freer society. Excerpted from THE DEMOCRATIC MARKETPLACE: HOW A MORE EQUAL ECONOMY CAN SAVE OUR POLITICAL IDEALS by Lisa Herzog, published by Harvard University Press.